ANALYSIS: Did the Bible predict the Chornobyl nuclear disaster? (05/26/96)

ANALYSIS: Did the Bible predict the Chornobyl nuclear disaster?

by Victor Lychyk

The April 26 anniversary of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident at the Chornobyl power station in Ukraine has drawn attention to the massive amount of problems that remain or are even growing 10 years after the explosion and fire occurred. At conferences and lectures, as well as in the mass media, the catastrophic ecological, medical and economic consequences of the accident have been examined.

Some have suggested the accident and its far-reaching and deadly effects could have been predicted and, therefore, avoided. For example, on March 27, 1986, exactly one month before reactor No. 4 exploded, an article appeared in the weekly newspaper Literaturna Ukraina that described in detail numerous problems that had besieged the plant during the construction, then in progress, of reactor No. 5. They included errors in planning, shortages and defects in construction materials, and low worker morale.

Author Liubov Kovalevska, then editor of the Prypiat newspaper Trybuna Enerhetykya, did not limit herself to problems surrounding the fifth reactor. Rather, she pointed out that "the problems of the first energy block were passed on to the second, the second to the third, and so on. And together with this they expanded...and there were a huge number of unsolved problems." While at the time Ms. Kovalevska was reproached and demoted by local officials for writing this piece, her article came to be cited by many both in Ukraine and the West as a warning that should have been heeded in order to avert the disaster that would occur just one month later.

Was the accident prophesied?

Is it possible, however, that the Chornobyl disaster could have been predicted or, more precisely, prophesied much earlier, nearly 2,000 years ago in the Bible?

To answer this question, let us first examine what the word "chornobyl," after which the town and nuclear plant are named, means in Ukrainian.

The term "chornobyl" refers to a plant that belongs to the genus Artemisia and the species vulgaris. It is described as a "perennial herbaceous plant with a brownish-black stem used in medicine; a variety of wormwood." In fact, all plants of the genus Artemisia are commonly referred to as wormwood. Wormwood is noted for its strong fragrance and bitter taste. Its extract is used for making alcoholic beverages such as wormwood wine or vermouth. Medicinally, it has been used to expel worms from the body and received its name because of this function.

The Bible contains several references to wormwood. The one that concerns us here occurs in the last book of the New Testament, Revelations. In this book the apostle John describes the vision he received of the Apocalypse that will occur at the end of the world. In Revelation 8 he writes:

"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of water. And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter."

The burning star

In this passage, wormwood is clearly a harbinger of great misfortune. If the images presented here are interpreted in terms of the disaster at Chornobyl, then the great burning star could symbolize the explosions and fire at the plant. The fire lasted for 10 days and was marked by heroic efforts of numerous clean-up workers, or "liquidators." Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of liquidators were dispatched to the forbidden zone in the months following the accident. Many of them have since died or have fallen ill as a result of the massive doses of radiation that they received.

The rivers and fountains of water

Another aspect of the misfortune described in these verses is the deadly contamination of a great amount of water. If we look at the location of Chornobyl on the map, we find that it is situated on the Prypiat River, not far from where it flows into the Dnipro River's Kyiv Reservoir, the third largest reservoir in Ukraine, with a surface area of 922 square kilometers. One of the major uses of this reservoir is to store drinking water.

Immediately after the reactor explosion, researchers noted radioactive contamination of the Dnipro, Prypiat and other rivers. During the past 10 years, the over-all level of radioactive contamination of river water itself has fallen, though it should be noted that radionuclides tend to settle on the bottom of the river.

So the potential for future contamination remains. According to a recent report in The Washington Post, "the immediate hazard" is that the sarcophagus, the structure that houses destroyed reactor No. 4, is deteriorating and "leaching radiation into the ground water that slowly is making its way to the nearby Dnipro River. Radioactive contamination of the Dnipro would threaten drinking water for Kyiv, just downstream, and many other Ukrainian cities."

According to Ukrainian physician, medical researcher and Ukraine's current Ambassador to the U.S. Yuri Shcherbak, it is not only radiation from the decaying sarcophagus, but also from hundreds of hastily made "burial sites" filled with radioactive waste in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around Chornobyl that "may account for the substantial contamination of the sediments of the Dnipro River and its tributary, the Prypiat, which supply water for 30 million people." These repositories of radioactivity must be removed if further contamination is to be prevented.

Returning to the passage from Revelations, it is possible that the rivers referred to are the Prypiat and Dnipro (among others), and that the "fountains of water" are the Kyiv Reservoir and other affected sources of drinking water.

The source of contamination: wormwood

It is understandable why the apostle John uses wormwood as a symbol for the substance that makes the water bitter and contaminates it. As noted above, wormwood is proverbial for the bitter taste of its extract. Yet the bitterness of wormwood is to be understood not only literally, in terms of its flavor, but also figuratively, in terms of a bitter experience. After all, we see in this passage that the water it poisoned caused the deaths of many.

This figurative usage of wormwood goes as far back as the Old Testament. In the Book of Amos, for example, the author-prophet writes "You have turned justice into poison, and righteousness into wormwood" (7:12). The author of Lamentations bemoans the fact that "He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood" (3:15) and also writes about "Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall" (3:19).

This meaning of the word has survived through the ages up to modern times and is found in many cultures and languages, including English. In the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, the second meaning of wormwood is an "emblem or type of what is bitter and grievous to the soul."

This meaning is echoed in other lexicographic references and in literature. In Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (Act III, Scene 2), the title character uses this word in an aside to the audience. In mid-19th century America, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" that "My life is bitter as wormwood."

And the name of the star...

While the connection between wormwood and bitterness may be clear, one can still ask why John chose to name a star after this plant. The answer may lie in taking a closer look at the wormwood plants themselves. We already know that wormwoods comprise the genus Artemisia. According to the botanic system of classification, Artemisia belongs to the family Asteraceae, which belongs to the order Asterales which, in turn, belongs to the subclass Asteridae. What the family, order and subclass name all have in common is their root, namely, aster, which is the Greek and Latin root meaning "star".

The root aster is in all likelihood used to describe the numerous plants in these groups because their shape in some way resembles that of a star. If we think of plants that belong to the other Asterales, such as asters, marigolds, daisies and sunflowers, the resemblance to the star shape becomes clear. The very word sunflower suggests a star-like appearance because the sun is, of course, a star. While the flowers of the wormwood may not be as obviously reminiscent of a star as the sunflower or the aster, it may be possible that something about the wormwood's appearance, in addition to its taste and meaning, caused John to choose it as the name for the star in the quoted passage.

Prophecy or coincidence?

It has been suggested that there are numerous similarities between the events described in Rev. 8:10-11 and the Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster. The burning star recalls the explosion and fire, the poisoned rivers and fountains of water in the Bible bring to mind the contaminated rivers and water reservoirs affected by the Chornobyl plant's unleashed radioactivity, the name of the Biblical star Wormwood has the same meaning as the name of the Ukrainian town where the disaster occurred.

Do the similarities between the tragedy at Chornobyl and Revelations 8:10-11 imply that this Biblical passage contains a prophecy that has been fulfilled, or are they merely a coincidence? This is a decision that everyone will have to make individually.

However one answers this question on this, the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, everything must be done to ensure that the destroyed but still dangerous reactor is safely sealed, the present situation is contained, those people affected by the explosion receive the care they deserve, and all necessary precautions are taken so that no such nuclear catastrophe occurs in the future.

If one accepts Rev. 8:10-11 as prophecy, then at least such measures would ensure that these verses represent a prophecy that has already been fulfilled, and do not contain the prophecy of a worse disaster yet to come, a prophecy to be fulfilled if the appropriate measures are not taken.

Victor Lychyk Ph.D. is a Slavic linguist, who works as a translator and independent researcher. He has contributed articles to Canadian Slavonic Papers and the Journal of Ukrainian Studies.

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